<p>Hi all! I'm new - this is my first post. DD graduates in 2009. We've made a few campus visits. One thing I've noticed is that she feels claustrophibic on the smaller ones (150 acres with 2,300 students). She was much more comfortable on the 300-500 acre campus visits. I never even thought to consider the acerage as one of the things to look for in a college. Anyone else feel the same?</p>
<p>I don't know about acres, but WPI seemed small to us. It's about 2/3 the size of my sons' high school. They've got a bit more space because of dorms, but not a lot more. In fact it seemed smaller than my boarding school which had a lot of acres.</p>
<p>It's certainly harder to find "private space" on a small campus. For those of us who grew up in the country, lack of space can be an issue. No idea if this is what's bothering your D of course.</p>
<p>Is it the acreage she's concerned about, or the number of students? They probably correlate. More students generally = larger campus (but not always).</p>
<p>I was surprised to find that my son pretty much wrote off any colleges that didn't have a central large flat grassy space (aka "quad.") I was confused by that until I realized that it gives a campus a sort of village-like feeling, a community surrounding a common area.</p>
<p>Thank you for the replies. Yes, we do live in the country. Can see the mountains, smell the corn fields and sometimes even hear the cows. It is the acerage, not the number of students she is talking about. She needs grassy areas and trees and just...space. Although on a dorm tour we were shown a two-person room made to fit three people. Two people to share a desk - each facing the other. She wouldn't survive. She has ADD. I hear that this senior year goes so quickly. Already scheduled for senior pictures in a couple of weeks. And just yesterday she was a baby. What happened?</p>
<p>I noticed that feeling as well, although for me the first factor was definitely student body size followed by campus size/layout. Even with a decent sized (350 acres) campus, 1400 students felt too small to me (my high school was about 3600 students). The same for another school with 1900 students. Wellesley, with 2300 students on about 500 acres and a relatively spread out campus, feels like a nice size to me. On the other hand, I've heard people complain that Wellesley feels eerily empty as opposed to more compact and bustling campuses, but, you know, to each their own.</p>
<p>If you want space, consider the US Air Force Academy.... it covers about 28 square miles (18,000 acres).</p>
<p>Senior year does indeed go by VERY fast. I feel like last night I was getting ready for my "last first day", as they call it around here, and now I'm halfway through my summer!</p>
<p>I was raised in a very large city, and I decided I wanted something smaller for college. The school I'm going to (Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, CA) has 8,500 students (one of the smallest CSUs) on 269 acres. Whenever I've taken tours or even when I was there for Orientation in late June, I was amazed at the lush green campus and especially the LAKE in the middle of campus!</p>
<p>It's really just a matter of finding the right spot for your D. :) With over 1,500 campuses in the US, odds are she'll find the right one for her.</p>
<p>You might also check out Collegeboard's College Matchmaker. You can select rural or suburban campuses...they tend to have more space. ^_^</p>
<p>Campus size does matter, some of us need more space to explore and not feel like we could memorize the entire campus in one week. We have seen small campuses for son's summer programs, so glad he is at a large one- his is a mix of urban and more college feel spaces- nice variety.</p>
<p>I attend a college with 20,000 students - and I couldn't imagine going to a smaller college. I went to a relatively small secondary school (graduating class of 85 students) and I was really glad to get out of that incredibly insular environment. Some people love the smaller schools, I'm not one of them.</p>
<p>I grew up at the edge of a small town in northern Michigan, on what I liked to call the "last street in America". Across the street nothing but forests, lakes, hills, and streams for about 30 miles to Lake Superior and the Canadian border. As an undergrad I went to a big school, the University of Michigan, and I loved the bustle and diversity of the place, but I still experienced occasional bouts of claustrophobia from being surrounded by buildings and people all the time. Fortunately, Michigan has a 700-acre arboretum immediately adjacent to campus where I was able to escape the claustrophobia with long walks. </p>
<p>I don't think it's the size of the school or the campus so much as the physical surroundings that bring on claustrophobia. Some schools are hemmed in on all sides by city. Others abut wide open spaces. My guess is if you tried some small schools in rural or semi-rural settings like Carleton, Grinnell, Hampshire, Mt. Holyoke, or Middlebury you wouldn't experience that feeling of claustrophobia. On the other hand, maybe she's had enough of rural/small town life and it's not so much physical claustrophobia as a desire to be at a bigger school that's the issue here. These are really quite distinct phenomena.</p>